Two trailblazing computer scientists have won the 2024 Turing Award for their work in reinforcement learning, a discipline in which machines learn through a reward-based trial-and-error approach that lets them adapt within constrained or dynamic environments. Andrew G. Barto, a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; and Richard S. Sutton, a professor at […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Here’s a blast from the past: Digg, one of the web’s early news aggregators, is now back under the ownership of its original founder Kevin Rose. Notably, he’s being joined as co-owner by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian (both pictured above). Digg and Reddit were once fierce rivals in the online social news aggregation space, launching […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The U.K.’s privacy watchdog has launched investigations into three social media companies over how they go about protecting the privacy of children on their respective platforms. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announced today that it’s looking into how TikTok uses personal information of 13- to 17-year-olds to recommend videos, “in light of growing concerns” around […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The software supply chain is notoriously porous: A reported 81% of codebases contain high- or critical-risk open source vulnerabilities. A single vulnerability can have a far-reaching impact on the wider software supply chain, as evidenced by the likes of the Log4Shell exploit that saw millions of applications exposed to potential remote code execution hacks via […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Privacy-focused messaging app Signal has been flying high in the Dutch app stores this past month, often sitting at the top as the most downloaded free app on iOS and Android across all categories, per data from multiple app-tracking platforms such as Sensor Tower. The app has experienced surges in popularity over the years, often […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

After kickstarting the market for making calls over the internet 23 years ago, Skype is closing down. Microsoft, which acquired the messaging and calling app 14 years ago, said it will be retiring it from active duty on May 5 to double down on Teams. Skype users have 10 weeks to decide what they want […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

IBM has finalized its multi-billion dollar HashiCorp acquisition, two days after the U.K.’s antitrust regulator gave the deal its blessing. An IBM spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had also quietly greenlighted the acquisition just prior to the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Tuesday. Today’s announcement comes 10 […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has introduced Ocelot, its first quantum computing chip. The news brings it into line with its big cloud rivals Microsoft and Google, which have also unveiled their own quantum chips in recent months, respectively Majorana and Willow. The cloud computing giant has long been investing in the quantum computing space, starting […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A four-year-old Swiss startup has raised a sizable chunk of change to capitalize on the burgeoning “agentic AI” movement. Unique said on Thursday that it has raised $30 million in a Series A funding round that was led by London-based VC firm DN Capital and CommerzVentures, the investment offshoot of Germany’s Commerzbank. “Agentic AI” is […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A new startup wants to help developers create customized, contextual coding assistants that can connect with any model and integrate seamlessly with their development environments. Founded in June 2023 by CEO Ty Dunn and CTO Nate Sesti (pictured above), Y Combinator alum Continue has already garnered some 23,000 stars on GitHub and 11,000 Discord community […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

The U.K.’s antitrust authority has given the go-ahead to IBM’s planned multibillion-dollar acquisition of infrastructure software company HashiCorp. In a brief case update published today, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it had “cleared the anticipated acquisition by IBM of HashiCorp,” and it would publish the full rationale for its decision in due course. […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Private equity firm Thoma Bravo has closed its inaugural European fund at €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion), through which it plans to take equity stakes in mid-sized software companies across the continent. Europe has no shortage of homegrown venture capital (VC) funds — the likes of Atomico and Cherry Ventures have closed early and growth-stage funds […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meta has formally expanded Meta AI to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), opening the AI-enabled chatbot to millions more people. Back in October, Meta announced it was launching Meta AI in six additional markets, including Brazil and the U.K. At the same time, the company teased gradual rollout plans for additional markets around […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Monolinguists wanting to communicate with the global masses have never had it so easy. Trusty old Google Translate can convert the content of images, audio, and entire websites across hundreds of languages, while newer tools such as ChatGPT also serve as handy pocket translators. On the back end, DeepL and ElevenLabs have have reached lofty […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Large language models (LLMs) landed on Europe’s digital sovereignty agenda with a bang last week, as news emerged of a new program to develop a series of “truly” open source LLMs covering all European Union languages. This includes the current 24 official EU languages, as well as languages for countries currently negotiating for entry to […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Identity security company CyberArk has acquired identity governance and administration (IGA) platform Zilla Security in a deal worth up to $175 million. The transaction consists of a $165 million cash portion and an additional $10 million “earn-out” which is payable upon meeting certain milestones — it can be seen as an incentive for the founders […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Developer tooling and containerization company Docker has a new CEO: Former Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) executive vice president Don Johnson (pictured above) landed in the hotseat starting Wednesday. Incumbent Scott Johnston will leave the company with immediate effect. During his eight-year spell at Oracle, Johnson was instrumental in transitioning the company from its legacy on-premise […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A new startup founded by a former Google DeepMind scientist is exiting stealth with $50 million in funding. Latent Labs is building AI foundation models to “make biology programmable,” and it plans to partner with biotech and pharmaceutical companies to generate and optimize proteins. It’s impossible to understand what DeepMind and its ilk are doing […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

As per an investigation by the Associated Press (AP), Tesla has won a defamation lawsuit against one individual called Zhang Yazhou, who in February 2021 was a passenger in a Tesla Model 3 car that allegedly crashed due to faulty brakes, resulting in a four-day hospital stay for both her parents. Following the accident, Zhang […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

When companies take shortcuts to build their software stack, prioritizing speed and quick-fixes over quality and long-term scalability, they can end up with what’s known as “technical debt.” Essentially, if a codebase is not constructed properly, as it grows, it will become more complex, cost more to maintain, and it’ll become ever harder to add […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.